Graduate Migration and Job Quality: Evidence From Five Cohorts of UK Graduate Outcomes Data

This paper examines the relationship between graduate employment migration and subjective job quality in the UK, using five cohorts of Higher Education Statistics Agency Graduate Outcomes microdata covering the 2018/19 to 2022/23 cohorts. Graduates are classified using a five‐way typology: Stayers (never leave the home region), Late Migrants (study in the home region but migrate for employment), Returners (migrate for study but return home for employment), Migrants (migrate for study and remain in the university city for employment), and Repeat Migrants (migrate at both stages). The primary outcome is a composite job quality index, with log annual salary as a comparison outcome. Estimation uses high‐dimensional institution‐by‐subject fixed effects. Spatial mobility at the employment stage is robustly associated with higher subjective job quality, and this association scales monotonically with the distance traveled, with long‐distance movers reporting larger premia and long‐distance Returners facing larger penalties. Late Migrants and Repeat Migrants report composite scores around 0.14 standard deviations above Stayers and salary premia of 6%–8%. Returners report significantly lower composite job quality than Stayers despite statistically indistinguishable salaries. The pattern is not driven by London and, as Oster (2019) bounds indicate, is unlikely to reflect unobservable selection. Migration premia are systematically larger for men and vary across the four UK nations. The findings are interpreted within a spatial job search framework that distinguishes the price paid for generic graduate human capital and credentials, reflected in wages, from the variety of graduate‐level role matches available locally, reflected in job quality.